I Love You
by RaeLynn Skye
Summary: Not often enough.


I Love you  
  
  
  
She never says it any more. Never. Not even during sex. Twice last week, I told her I loved her, but she didn't say it back once.  
  
Too busy working on her homework, or too busy flirting with one of the younger guys.  
  
Didn't say it once last month either.  
  
Not once.  
  
She used to tell me twice, three times a day, in the morning, after I'd gotten out of the shower, after we made love, and when I held her safe in my arms right before she fell to sleep.  
  
And now, she's never there after I get out of the shower, she's too busy studying for a test, too busy making mission plans with the handsome and chivalrous and perfect Scott Gray-Summers. We have sex maybe three times a week, at a maximum.  
  
And it's not just the sex that I miss, either.  
  
God, I miss her. She comes to bed sometimes, and she's so tired that she can't even move. She pushes me away, curls up into a little ball in the corner of the bed, and cries herself to sleep.  
  
And I don't know what to do. Whenever I try to talk to her, she's too busy.  
  
When we fell in love, she was just a student, and there was time to do anything that we wanted. She could lie in my arms for hours, doing differential equations while I smelled her hair, and stroked her back.  
  
When we moved in together, she was just on the team, we were both on the team, so we could work together, we could neck like teenagers in the blackbird on the way to the mission, and we'd both be so aroused, and hyped up that we would kick ass on the mission, and we could come back, and have sex until the early hours of the morning.  
  
Now, she's in college, taking night courses, planning missions with Scott, helping teach a self defense course, and she goes in to the city a couple of times a week to volunteer at the library and help needy kids at a homeless shelter.  
  
And there's no time for me.  
  
Thinking that just makes me feel so selfish, like I think I should be the only one in her life. But I don't, not at all, I think that she should do what makes her happy. And I used to make her happy.  
  
But I don't any more.  
  
I followed her to the city last week.just to see what she did, what she did that makes her so tired at night that she can't do anything but whimper at night when she comes to bed.  
  
She met a man there.  
  
I guess he was handsome, but I don't know, my mind was too blurred with jealousy. They were meeting for coffee.  
  
I took her to a coffee place for our first official date.  
  
I couldn't even watch them, I couldn't even watch my precious Marie with another man, couldn't see her betray me.  
  
So I went to a bookstore, a fucking bookstore, and I went into the self- help aisle, and I found a book called "When someone you love is keeping secrets from you."  
  
I finished it yesterday. I'm supposed to talk to her, confront her about it, head on. Try to keep myself in order, try not to stab anything.  
  
But it wasn't easy keeping myself calm when the woman I love was sitting right in front of me, calmly writing a paper, pretending like nothing was wrong.  
  
"Marie, we need to talk." I said.  
  
"Not right now Logan." She didn't even glance up.  
  
"Marie, we need to talk now."  
  
"I'm busy." She said.  
  
"You're always busy lately." I said. "I want to talk to you." I closed my eyes, she wasn't looking up at me, she still was looking at her paper, her hand moving across the page. "Can't you please just give me ten minutes?"  
  
"I'll be up in an hour, Logan, can't it wait."  
  
I breathed in, breathed out. Calm. Easy. "I'd like it if we could talk now, Marie." I slipped my hand over hers, halted the movement of her pen. She looked up at me. "Please, Marie."  
  
She was pale, her eyes tired, and her hand was shaking. "I need a break anyway." She said. "Can we talk in the kitchen? I need some fuel."  
  
"Yeah." I said. "Absolutely."  
  
We walked into the kitchen, a distance apart, like total strangers. I wanted to reach out to her, to hold her hand, anything. But when we got there, all I said was "Can I make you some tea?"  
  
"Yeah." She said, and turned to the refrigerator. "So, what did you want to talk about?" Her voice was not chipper. Her head was not high. I didn't want to do this.  
  
"I'm going to leave tonight." I said. It wasn't what I meant to say, but I couldn't bear to see her like this, run down, tired, if being without me would make her happier, being with someone else would make her happier, so be it.  
  
She dropped the jar of mayonnaise that she was holding, it clattered to the floor, the knife held in her hand like a weapon. "What?" She said, looking up. Her eyes were wide, and her skin even paler than it had been.  
  
"I'm leaving." I said. Couldn't take it back now. "I want you to be happy, and I know that if I'm gone, you'll be happier."  
  
She swallowed. "No." She said, but it was weak, and I could tell that she didn't mean it. "You'll leave for yourself.and I guess I deserve that."  
  
I didn't know how to take that. For me.she thought I wanted to leave her. But she deserved that.was it 'I deserve it.' As in she wanted it. Or 'I deserve it.' As in she thought it was punishment.  
  
I wasn't about to ask.  
  
I closed my eyes. "I'm sorry, Marie." I said. It would be weak to say what I wanted to say next. But she had to know. "I love you." I said, then turned, and walked away.  
  
"Don't go." She said. Suddenly I felt her arms around my waist. "I'm being selfish." I tried to turn around, but her arms were vise-like around my waist. "I.I've been being selfish."  
  
"What do you mean?" I asked, she wasn't being selfish, just, just who she was, and if who she was didn't love me anymore, didn't want me in her life anymore, that was okay. I wasn't bitter, just sad.  
  
"With school, and the team, and trying to keep you to myself."  
  
"Marie."  
  
"Logan, I want you to stay, this is the only home you've ever had, and I don't want you to leave because of me." She let go, and paced away from me. "You don't have to be with me, but, I don't want to be the reason that you leave."  
  
"Marie."  
  
"But, I.just, I'm so sorry I was so bad to you.I didn't mean to be."  
  
"Marie." She stopped. "I saw you with that guy last week."  
  
"Oh." She said. She turned and faced me. "Oh, Logan, it's not what you think."  
  
"Marie, I don't care what it is.I'm just tired of this all."  
  
"Logan, I can explain, oh please, don't be leaving because of that."  
  
"I'm not." I said. "I just want you to be happy, Marie, and I *know* that you're not happy now, and I know that part of that is me."  
  
"I don't.it's not.you're.Logan." She came up to me, and slid her arms around my waist, the contact, loving, open, her, felt so good. "You're the only reason that I'm sane right now. Everything is crazy except you."  
  
"I don't." I pulled away from her, no matter how good it felt, I had to finish this. "Marie, that doesn't make sense."  
  
"Why not?" She asked.  
  
"You keep turning away from me at night. You haven't told me you loved me in a month."  
  
She blinked once, twice. "I.really?"  
  
"Yeah." I said, she looked so shocked, so amazed that that might be true that I wanted to reach out to her. "Not once."  
  
"I.I'm sure I have." I shook my head. "Oh God.Logan, I'm so sorry."  
  
"It's okay." I said.this was too confusing. "I have to ask you something."  
  
"Yes?" She said.  
  
"Do you love me?"  
  
"Yes." She said, and then she came up to me, "Oh God, so much."  
  
"Good." I said, resting my cheek on top of her head. It was tempting to stop there, to just let it stay as it was, let her and I be together, be happy. But I couldn't. "Marie.who was that guy?"  
  
"He's my professor." She said. "I've been having some trouble in his class, and I asked for some help." She reached up, and grasped my hand. "Logan. I'm sorry I didn't tell you, before, but, I'm really tired. This all is too much. And I don't want you to be mad, but I think I'm going to quit the team."  
  
"Good." I said. She looked up at me confusedly. "Marie, I know how hard all of this is on you. I.was wondering why you didn't want to talk to me about it before."  
  
"I haven't had enough time. I've been planning it all, what I'm going to do, what I'm going to say, and I just never have time to do it.I thought you wanted me to do something.I mean, something so that I could support us too." Her eyes were misty, confused. "Logan.I heard Jean talking before, a couple of months ago, about how you wouldn't be satisfied with me for long, and that I wasn't mature enough for you, and that everything we had would fall apart soon.so I wanted to do more, to be better, to keep learning, and teaching, and be better than her, and better than I was, and better than you, so you wouldn't." her eyes were teary, ".wouldn't realize that I was a mistake you made, and that you didn't want me."  
  
"I would never think that Marie." I said, and wrapped my arms around her. "I've loved you since we met, since you asked me if it hurt. You're the first person who ever really cared about me since I remember. And since then, it's just gotten bigger. I just love who you are, not what you do, or anything like that. Just who you are."  
  
"Logan."  
  
"No, just listen." I closed my eyes, ran my fingers through her hair. "I loved you in the beginning, when we just sat for hours, doing nothing but being with each other, and I loved you five minutes ago when I said I was going to leave you. I just love you, and I want you to be happy."  
  
"Do you want to stay?" She asked.  
  
"Yes." I said, and opened my eyes again as she stepped away.  
  
"I want you to stay." She said, and then reached out for my hand. It'd been a long time since we'd really held hands, just to hold hands. "I'm going to quit the team." She said. "And I'm going to stop teaching. And I'm going to start taking classes during the day, and at night, I'm going to be with you."  
  
"For you, right? Not for me?"  
  
"Yes." She said. "For me." Then she turned around, still holding my hand, and she tugged on it. "Come upstairs with me."  
  
I followed her as we walked upstairs. "I'm sorry about all of this," She said. "I didn't mean to make you think I didn't love you." She opened the door to our room, and pulled me inside. "Because I do. I love you Logan, so much."  
  
"I love you too." I said.  
  
"Good." She said. "Because there's one more thing I want to do, that I didn't want to tell you while we were downstairs.  
  
"Yes?" I said.  
  
She backed up and pulled off my shirt. "I want you to make love with me every day for the rest of my life." She said, and began to unbutton her shirt. "And for the rest of your life."  
  
She came up to me, wrapped her arms around my neck, and kissed me, then she pulled her mouth away, and whispered in my ear: "I want to marry you."  
  
And the rest of the night spun into oblivion. 


End file.
